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Changing My relationship to the Faire Feast Kitchen

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I have cooked in the So Cal Ren Faire kitchen for 14 seasons, the last 7 of which I have been the team leader/kitchen manager and a cook. Although chronologically I am still sort-of young (62) my body has been betraying me for the last 20 years. Between my lumbar spondolosis and my diabetes I have had increasing mobililty and decreasing engery issues. I noticed last year that I was starting to have trouble putting in the long weekend days that being the manager requires. My day starts between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. and if I'm lucky I can eek out a 15 minute break somewhere before I am able to walk away at 2:00 for a few hour break. On Saturday I am back at it at 5:00 and put in another couple of hours. On Sunday it is almost the same but I will put in another 3 1/2 to 4 hours starting at five to close the kitchen for the weekend.

I had to make the decision this year to renlinquish the team leader/manager position at the end of this season. I will still cook for the faire and do the purchasing during the week, but I will no longer have to do the closing of the kitchen, the hardest part. The kitchen consists of 4 areas. The first area is a 10 x 20 Costco "garage" (we call it the feast tent) which serves as the food pantry, ice cooler for meat, prep area, pot and pan storage and serving bowls/platters,etc storage. the second area is sandwiched between the feast tent and a 20' ocean shipping container. For cooking in this area I have an 8-burner event grill, a 2-burner freestanding camp stove (25k BTU per burner) and a 3-burner freestanding camp stove (30k BTU per burner). There are also ice coolers for dairy and for vegetables, shelves for drink pitchers and other bits and bobs. The third area is dishwashing. There are shelves for dirty dishes, a table with a 3-sink approach to dishwashing using 10 gallon Rubbermaid totes, the sink for filling and dumping the tubs, and shelving for air-drying the pots, pans, bowls, etc. I actually use a 4th tub for pre-wash to keep the wash tub from getting too dirty too fast. There are also paper towels available to wipe out visible food bits. The fourth area is the ready-to-serve area with shelving for foods ready to serve and a table to plattering (10 platters of meat and 4 "specialty" platters).

As I said the hard part is the closing of the kitchen. By the way, my crew has a paying gig in the afternoon so they are not available to help with the closing. We cook from scratch each meal. Since we use ice coolers, any leftover food has to be removed from the coolers, the bags of ice removed, and then the water in the coolers has to be dumped. All of the serving pieces have to be pulled off of the drying shelves and stored in the tent. Any serving pieces that have come back late have to be washed, drying and stored also.There are 8 trash cans that have to have their liners pulled, and placed upside down to prevent errant trash from ending up in them. The wash area has to have the tubs dumped and generally cleaned up. Tarps are put in place where needed. I also have to do the rounds of 6 propane tanks to see if any are nearly empty to be put with the ones already emptied. The ready-to-serve area needs a once-over. It may not sound like much but it is a minimum of 3 hours work for me, usually more. This closing of the kitchen is why I am stepping down. My body has said, "No more."

I know that their are several member here that have heard me talk of running the kitchen and I wanted to share why I am stepping down.

The good news is that I still have what it takes to do my share of the cooking. I am grateful for that.

11

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I think a lot of folks who enjoy events like the Renaissance Faire have no idea what it takes to keep the staff fed. You've done yeoman's work for them, for many a year. I hope they find a worthy team leader to take the load off you. It's good that you'll be able to keep cooking.

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Cooking more than a dinner for 8 is serious work and hard on the body. Cooking for a rabble hoard is several orders of magnitude more strenuous. Good for you that you realized its time to move forward.

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I think I failed to mention that our Guild Mistress has chosen my late 20s daughter as my successor. She has cooked with me for about 3 years. She really shines in sauteing vegetables. I will still be Mr Meat. For this final weekend of Spring 2016 I will be grilling top sirloin steaks for Saturday and chuck eye steaks Sunday for the beef portion of the meat platters. Pork will be boneless shoulder meat that I have already oven roasted and will finished on the grill to set a BBQ sauce glaze. Carnivores don't go hungry.

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Over the years, I've very much enjoyed your insights and "behind the scenes" views into an aspect of the Ren Faires that I was completely oblivious to. I look forward to those posts continuing.

It sounds like you have planned a wise transition into a role that will afford you much involvement but shift some of the more physically arduous tasks. I hope you'll find that altered role as fulfilling as previously, though relinquishing partial control is potentially a uneasy situation. Since you've been responsible for so much for so long, it may be rather a shock to the organization as they realize how much you have been doing. I hope all goes well for you.

When the So Cal Ren Faire was in Agoura, I used to attend pretty regularly but I haven't been since they moved down south. I think that was in 1988, so it's been a while!

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I hope your daughter will let you continue to be the voice of the faire here. Like the others, I have enjoyed hearing about your role and the amazing amount of prep work it required. You can sat back and become the wise elder now! Well earned title I'm sure.

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I took pictures this weekend before I began the end-of-season tear-down.

Here is a plot of the overall layout: (The kitchen stove shown in the layout is no longer used.)

The kitchen area (inside and outside), but not the dish-washing area, is off-limits to everyone except the kitchen crew while preparing the feast. This layout makes it very clear where that boundary is.

There are additional feast helpers who sit "on stage" and prepare platters of "salad." Each platter has fresh veggies, fresh fruit, black and green olives and pickles on it.

From this kitchen we put out grilled beef, grilled chicken, grilled pork, lil' smokies in BBQ sauce, coined kielbasa, meatballs, steamed potatoes, 4 types of cheese that we cube fresh daily, steamed veggies, sauteed veggies and baskets of various kinds of rolls. All items except the rolls are cut into finger-food serving size.

And now onto the kitchen pictures.

This is looking through the pots-and-pans shelving at the doorway into the outdoor cooking area:

This is standing next to the pots-and-pans shelving looking to the right showing the unused stoves and the steel prep table:

Turning to the right shows the pantry shelving across from the steel table:

This is standing next to the pantry shelving looking down the rest of the wall, showing the other prep tables and storage. The prep tables are 6' banquet tables with leg extensions to raise them to counter-height. one is 36" and one is 39".

The table area next to the pantry shelves has the spice, oil and vinegar shelves:

As of ths year we had plenty of under-table storage for gadgets and tools, and we need 2 knife blocks to contain all of the knifes we have on hand (including 5 paring knives - yes we use them all).

Across from the above prep table is shelving for our serving bowls and platters, some misc Cambro pans and bread products on the top shelf. The shelving seen out the end of the feast tent is the drying shelving. The top drying shelves have vertical supports for drying cutting boards, lids, platters etc.

This is the view looking across the washing station at the drying racks. The flow works very nicely. The dish washers put the items to be dried onto the shelves from the dish washing side and we pull dried items off of the shelves from the kitchen side.

And, last but not least is a view of the 3-burner stove and the big grill. The pot on the ground is where I keep wooden spoons for my 2 y/o grandson to play with in the afternoons. He is not allowed in kitchen (as best as I can control) when we are cooking. It is his mother, my daughter, who is taking over managing the kitchen next year.

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I just found a picture that a guild member took during the feast. The raised platform at the back is where the widow of the former mayor and her special guests preside over the feast. On the table pictured you can see the meat platter, the veggie platter, the cheese platter is farther back, a server at the other end of the table is offering vegan-prepartion potato chunks, etc. If you're a peasant you eat with your hands. I love feeding my friends.

I generally loos about 5 pounds (and this is a good thing) during faire because I don't eat enough on the weekends. I'm thinking that I will probably eat a little better in the future now that I am not the manager.

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I've been meaning to ask: are these meals during the shows or after hours? I've only worked a smaller (6 week) faire as a vendor, so we didn't stay on site, but I gather it's not so in character for the folks who do camp out. But I know the west coast (and socal specifically) has a very different faire "culture" than most.

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The feast is a mid-day meal, eaten on stage in full view of the traverlers (the paying customers).

Our run is seven weekends in the spring. We are roughly 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Our guild, The Guild of Saint Cuthbert, does several parades during the day, including the opening and closing parades, puts on pagents in the streets, and has some demonstration stuff in our enviromental area (dedicated area in view of and accessible to the travelers) allowing the travelers to see and touch and ask questions. Some of our people also go out into the streets to gig with the travelers.

This faire, the Southern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire, is the original renaissance faire that Phyllis and Ron Patterson created in 1963. It has gone through many changes since then. Our guild mistress has been part of faire since 1967. I have been part of it since 2000.

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The Southern season that ended last month was, for me, the season from hell, not only because of the demands of faire but rather all of life making too many demands on me. Unfortunately, faire is the only item on the list of things I have to be responsible for that I could stop doing. I don't talk much about my 12-step recovery here but the level of stress and pain in my life was upped so much that it put my recovery in jeopardy but I was not in a position to walk away. So, I am taking the 2018 Southern season off. I have been in the kitchen there for 15 years and I need a long break to help me get back to a healthy place. Since the other stressers are still in my life, most notably helping with my dying FIL, I expect getting back to where I need to be mentally will take a long while. I want to be back for the 2019 season.

However, I am not completely abandoning my guild. My equipment will still be there to be used. All of the cooking gear you see in the pictures, along with the 3-burner camp stove and large event grill, are mine. I am not mad at the guild, I just need space, so the equipment will go out. Also, I will continue to do the feast shopping, which I already do during the week, and deliver it during the week. What I won't be doing is being anywhere near the faire on the weekends.

Because I have not had someone come behind me whom I could mentor, I have been writing a thorough set of documents for how the feast works, and how the kitchen makes that happen. There are a myriad of little things that have to come together to make it happen.

My daughter who was going to take over the kitchen management had a major change in her life between accepting to take it over last year and this past season starting up. She went from being unemployed to being employed full-time + mandatory overtime on a shift that doesn't start until 12:30 p.m. That job, along with being the mother of an active 3 y/o son, left her without the necessary time and energy to take over.

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The Southern season that ended last month was, for me, the season from hell, not only because of the demands of faire but rather all of life making too many demands on me. Unfortunately, faire is the only item on the list of things I have to be responsible for that I could stop doing. I don't talk much about my 12-step recovery here but the level of stress and pain in my life was upped so much that it put my recovery in jeopardy but I was not in a position to walk away. So, I am taking the 2018 Southern season off. I have been in the kitchen there for 15 years and I need a long break to help me get back to a healthy place. Since the other stressers are still in my life, most notably helping with my dying FIL, I expect getting back to where I need to be mentally will take a long while. I want to be back for the 2019 season.

However, I am not completely abandoning my guild. My equipment will still be there to be used. All of the cooking gear you see in the pictures, along with the 3-burner camp stove and large event grill, are mine. I am not mad at the guild, I just need space, so the equipment will go out. Also, I will continue to do the feast shopping, which I already do during the week, and deliver it during the week. What I won't be doing is being anywhere near the faire on the weekends.

Because I have not had someone come behind me whom I could mentor, I have been writing a thorough set of documents for how the feast works, and how the kitchen makes that happen. There are a myriad of little things that have to come together to make it happen.

My daughter who was going to take over the kitchen management had a major change in her life between accepting to take it over last year and this past season starting up. She went from being unemployed to being employed full-time + mandatory overtime on a shift that doesn't start until 12:30 p.m. That job, along with being the mother of an active 3 y/o son, left her without the necessary time and energy to take over.

The Faire has always put a lot of stress on workers behind the scenes and it is a shame that the managers don't want to spend the money on more trained help. It was the same back in the early '70s when I had my booth there (at the Hope Ranch in Thousand Oaks). One of the cooks was a woman who had been recruited from a hotel and prior had been a cook in the Army so she had a lot of experience. I often met with her and we talked about our Army days. One of the organizers kept asking for extra meals for "VIP guests" that she was hosting, usually at the last minute, then "borrowing" one or two of the kitchen helpers to set up her table and serve her guests.

I thought that was totally out of order but I was just a lowly vendor. I showed up one day to set up my booth and learned that Lou had quit. One straw too many.

This reminded me that I found a stack of SCA publications from the '70s and '80s. Tournaments Illuminated and Crown Prints. I have been thumbing through them and remembering friends I haven't seen for decades and wondering if they are still living.

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Some things have changed, and one of my major sources of stress while I am at faire is no longer an issue, and I have decided to lead the feast team once again. I am, however, making sure that I do more self-care to not ended up feeling like I did last season. In the case of the terminally-ill in-law for whom I have been providing a lot of boots-on-the-ground support, I have been making moves for the children of said in-law to up their game and provide some of the support stuff that I have been doing. Part of my temperament is having a high level of ownership of the things I take on, so figuring out how to lessen the feeling that it all depends on me has been hard.

I am making some procedural changes to spread out some of the tasks that can be done either off-site (I will steam the 15 dozen hard-cooked eggs I need at home) , or earlier. Last year my DW and I started driving separately so that I could finish closing the kitchen on Monday mornings before heading over to do some of the ill in-law support stuff I do. This year I will arrive at the faire site early afternoon Friday so I can do some of the tasks that can be done ahead, such as cubing 16 lbs of cheese.. I am simplifying the menu a tad to also help. I have the blessing of the "salad crew" who sit in view of the audience and cut up the raw veggies and fruits that are served on platters. I am taking an extra cooler of mine and will stage the day's produce in that cooler to I don't have to stop n the middle of other tasks to give them what they need. I wish I would have thought of that one a few years ago.

So ... once again into the breach ...

On 6/10/2017 at 8:57 PM, andiesenji said:

... remembering friends I haven't seen for decades and wondering if they are still living.

Faire as I know started it started in 1963. In the 19 seasons I have been doing it I have witnessed the passing of many, many people. Considering how long ago 1963 was, it makes perfect sense, but it doesn't always make it easy. The one I am not done grieving for was my faire friend that was a victim of the San Bernardino massacre in December 2015. He was a gentle, giving soul who loved life.

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2 years ago, I found myself unexpectedly having to retire early. It wasn’t something I wanted to do but it happened. However, there was a pleasant side effect of retiring. I have dealt with chronic pain for many years. When I stopped commuting and sitting at a computer all day my pain level went way down. Now most days my initial dose of meds gets me through the whole day. I do still have the occasional “bad pain day” but it is no longer the norm.

However …

The Southern California Renaissance Faire does not have its own property; we lease park space from the county of Los Angeles and build/re-assemble our faire anew each year. I willing spend, as a volunteer, 30+ hours a week doing what I do to support the guild I am in at the faire. Yeah, call it full-time work. I realized during the pre-faire weekends part of ren-faire, when we were doing the build, that my pain level was back to chronic. It is my body’s way of saying, “Hey, you’re not anything close to a young man anymore.” Based upon not wanting to be in continuing pain if I had a choice, I chose. I announced my retirement from running or working in the feast kitchen when this season ends. I’ve been a part of the kitchen for 15 years with this being my 9th year leading. Yes, last year my daughter was supposed to be the team leader but in practice it didn’t work out. Come next spring I know it will feel weird not gearing up for another season, but my body will be saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!

ETA: Part of my time apart from faire is sill doing support stuff for my terminally-ill family member.

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That's a big decision and a big step to take, Porthos, but it sounds like the right one. I can tell you from personal experience that it's difficult to let go of a job - paid or not - that you love. I can also tell you that once you settle into a new routine and realize how much more time and energy you have to do other things you love (or must do out of love and obligation), you'll be glad of your decision. You'll also have a lot of good memories stemming from work well done when your body allowed you to enjoy it.

The Faire Kitchen will get along without you, somehow. Let's hope that someone in addition to your daughter pays a lot of attention this year to what you've been doing, and is willing to ask a lot of questions.

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When I discussed my retiring from the feast kitchen one of the things we talked about was whether it meant I was just stopping running the kitchen or if I was going to stop participating in this faire. I talked a little bit about it but made no commitments. I have concluded that my best personal option is to walk away completely when this season is done and everything is packed away. I am willing to let them use my equipment in the future. but they would have to fetch it and return it. I would rather not be physically present at all.

I am continuing (on a year to year basis) my participation in the faire up near Hollister in the fall. Even as team leader I have considerably less overall responsibility there and have already had discussion on how to minimize the actions and motions that do contribute to my pain level. And the tradition of really bad puns being made as we work must continue.